James Chase - A Can of Worms

All around me in the restaurant, people were talking about Hamel’s death.

One loud-mouthed woman summed it up. She said, “Well, when a guy writes the muck he did, he must have been a nutcase. I mean, those bedroom scenes! He’s better off dead.”

I wanted to tell her how wrong she was, but I didn’t. I thought of Hamel. I had liked him. I felt sorry for him.

Soon after 23.20, I drove to Paradise Largo. As I pulled up at the barrier, I saw some dozen men, sitting on the grass verge, smoking and talking. The press vultures never gave up!

O’Flagherty came out of the guardhouse.

“Man!” I said. “You are certainly having a ball!”

He grinned.

“Yeah. No one gets by me, Bart. No one got by me. I told Lepski.” O’Flagherty’s moon-shaped face was glistening with sweat. “What a thing!”

“Sure is.” I waited until he raised the pole, watched by envious eyes, then I drove to Herschenheimer’s gates. Carl let me in.

“Man!” he exclaimed. “The old man’s flipping.”

“So?”

He grinned.

“So nothing. He’s keeping Jarvis out of bed. Just look busy. I’ve had enough of it. See you.”

When he had gone, I went into the cottage, found a pack of sandwiches waiting, and I sat down. I wondered what was going on across the road. I wondered if Palmer was still there, fussing around.

As I began to eat the sandwiches, Jarvis appeared. I saw he was doing a flipping act.

“Mr. Anderson, I couldn’t sleep until I talked to you.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes.” He moved forward and sat down. “What a day I’ve had! I have had to give Mr. Herschenheimer a sedative. He is now sleeping.”

I munched on the third sandwich.

“What’s cooking?”

“Mr. Washington Smith and his wife have been dismissed.”

This news didn’t surprise me. It made sense. Knowing what I knew, Smith and his wife would be a menace to Pofferi, hiding in the house.

I put on my surprised expression.

“Dismissed?”

“Yes.” Jarvis looked miserable. “Mr. Palmer told them they must go immediately. They were given no time... just pack and go. Dreadful! After fifteen years of faithful service! They were paid a year’s salary. Mr. Palmer explained that Mrs. Hamel wanted them to go. He was nice about it. He seemed shocked.”

“That’s tough,” I said.

“I will miss Mr. Smith. It is difficult to understand. Mr. and Mrs. Smith kept that house beautifully.”

“Any news of Mrs. Hamel?”

Jarvis lifted his lean shoulders. From his expression, I could see Nancy Hamel was no longer in favour.

“Mr. Smith didn’t even see her to say goodbye. It was so abrupt.”

I took another sandwich: thinly cut lobster meat with a touch of mayonnaise.

“So who’s going to run the house?”

“That is something Mr. Smith or I cannot understand. Mr. Smith was told by Mr. Palmer that Josh Jones will look after things until Mrs. Hamel leaves. She intends to sell the estate as soon as the burial has taken place.”

“Josh Jones? Who is he?” I asked, probing.

“Mr. Hamel’s crewman.” Jarvis looked down his nose. “A no-good nigger.”

“Is Mr. Palmer still over there?”

“He left after the police had gone.”

I now had all the information I needed. I wanted Jarvis out of the way. I told him he looked tired. I said I would be right here if he needed me and taking the hint, he went back to the house. I gave him five minutes, then walked down to the gates and climbed the tree.

There was a light on in the living room, but the curtains were drawn. I wondered if Nancy and Pofferi were behind those curtains, talking together, planning what they would do with the money once Nancy inherited it. I sat with my back against the tree, waiting and watching.

Nothing happened.

After an hour, the light went out and a light went on in a room at the far end of the ranch house. Nancy’s bedroom? Then I heard the sound of a car approaching. Leaning forward, I saw the car stop outside Hamel’s gates. From my perch in the tree, I could see right down on the car’s roof. I watched Josh Jones get out of the car, thumb the red button and wait. The gates opened. He slid into the car and drove up the drive. The gates automatically closed.

The porch light went on as he pulled up and the front door opened.

Framed in the doorway was Pofferi!

There was no mistaking the broad shouldered, squat figure. Jones shouted to him and the porch light went out. I tried to pierce the darkness, but I could only make out the silhouette of the car.

Then the lights went on behind the curtains of the living room.

Resting my back against the trunk of the tree, I waited. After some minutes, another light went on in the room next to Nancy’s room. I waited. Time crawled by, then all the lights went out.

I slid down the tree and returned to the cottage. Jarvis, had left a bottle of Scotch on the desk. I poured, drank and sat down.

Then a beautiful idea struck me. There were times when even I surprised myself when my money hunting mind clicks into action.

A million dollars!

Bart, baby, I said to myself, it’s waiting for you across the road. Play your cards right, and you have it made.

Across the road, in Hamel’s house, two terrorists were hiding. One of them would inherit Hamel’s fortune. I had no idea what he was worth, but the fact this book would bring in eleven million gross, he must be worth at least twenty million.

Twenty million! And I had been dim enough to wonder why Diaz had parted with fifty thousand without a whimper to keep me quiet. Man! Had I been dim! Diaz knew that if I had blown the whistle, some twenty million or more would have gone down the drain. No wonder he parted so easily. Fifty thousand... peanuts!

I thought of Diaz.

I promise you one thing, if you try to put pressure on me again, you will have an unpleasant end.

Oh, yeah?

That cheap grease-ball wasn’t going to scare me away from a million dollars.

There was a typewriter on the desk.

More paperwork, Bart, baby, I said. More life insurance. I typed out in duplicate, the facts as I knew them: how Nancy had smuggled Pofferi into the ranch house, how she had gone off in the yacht to establish an alibi, how Pofferi had murdered Hamel to look like suicide, and that he and Nancy were still in the ranch house, bottled up by the waiting press.

I put the original of the statement in an envelope which I addressed to Howard Selby with a covering note. If he didn’t hear from me within twenty-four hours, he was to hand the envelope to Chief of Police Terrell. The second copy I put in another envelope.

I made myself a drink and relaxed back in a lounging chair. I thought out the next moves.

Later, when I was satisfied I had got the scene set, I turned my mind to what I would do with a million dollars.

I wondered if I should telephone Bertha and tell her not to marry her Fink. Bertha had become a habit with me. I hesitated about losing her. I thought some more and decided to hell with her! It would be fun to sit back and let the dolly birds chase me for a change. Would they come arunning, once the news leaked out that I was worth a million!

Dreams!

As soon as Carl relieved me at midday the following morning, I got in the Maser and drove to the Trueman building. There I handed my statement to the mousy looking girl, telling her I wanted a receipt. I stood over her while she typed to my dictation on Selby’s letter heading. I waited until she took the receipt into Selby who had a client. She returned with his signature and I told her to lock the letter in the safe.

Bug-eyed, she said she would.

Just to give her a thrill, I gave her my sexy smile, and said in my alluring voice, “You have beautiful hands.”